


The Heart of a King

by AmityRavenclawElf



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-03-15 18:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: I was not so fortunate as to see Hadestown live, but this is how I imagine Chant II and Epic III played out, and luckily my imagination doesn't need to fit on a stage in a theater, and my imagination apparently has a pretty high special effects budget.





	1. Chant II

Hades could hear the whispering voices.

Of course he could; he didn’t exactly maintain this place via dearth of paranoia. So he could hear the things they were saying about the girl, about him. He heard everything.

 

Is it true? Is it true?

 

He walked past the vagabond man, Hermes, who looked on soberly. Well...sober wasn’t exactly the word, was it?

Their heads turned back to their work when he was near, which would have been a testament to his power over them if it weren’t for the fact that the heads had to have been turned away in the first place, in order to turn back, and that was unacceptable.

He saw the boy rather soon. How could he not, what with all of the furtive glances being sent the boy’s way, in addition to the fact that the boy had a musical instrument (one of the stringed ones) strapped to his back.

The boy saw him, as well. There was fear in his eyes but defiance in his posture.

And nearby was Persephone, of course. His queen, his love, always found her way back in the throng of commoners. Was she that bored of him?

Well, that didn’t matter.

The closer Hades drew to the boy, the greater the tension in the air. At last, productivity hit its trough; Hades stood face-to-face with the musician, the boy frowning, taking a slightly defensive stance. The area was silent. No one hammering. No one sawing. Just waiting. Fearing and craving the hand of retribution- fearing because to bring the pauper down would dash whatever hopes they had placed in him, and craving, because whatever else they believed, it validated them to see someone suffer the punishment of which they had remained so wary.

Once the boy was dead, all of this would go away. That was true.

He could feel his queen’s eyes on him, but he did not look in her direction.

Into the silence, into the wary eyes of the young man, Hades laughed.

 

“Ahahaha.”

 

This managed to increase the tension.

Hades placed his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Orpheus- that was his name. The boy tried to shrink from his grip, but Hades only tightened it, with an affable smile.

 

“When I was a young man, like you

Son I held a woman, too

Held her in my naked hands

When I was a young man.”

 

Hades ended the side-hug and instead placed his hands on Orpheus’s shoulders and brought him around to face him. This was a performance, everything was always a performance, but Hades could feel a bit of earnestness creeping into it.

 

“Now you know how it feels

Women are as slick as eels

Woman, quicker than the asp

Always slipping from your grasp.”

 

It didn’t matter that his words were bitter, because they were strong.

 

“Take it from a man no longer young

If you want to hold a woman, son

Hang a chain around her throat

Made of many-carat gold.”

 

Orpheus was beginning to look both horrified and overwhelmed by his words, which only fed the flames, as it were; the boy was revealing his weakness, and his weakness was the reason that he had fallen into this predicament.

 

“Shackle her, from wrist to wrist,

With sterling silver bracelets

Fill her pockets full of stones

Precious ones, diamonds.”

 

The words began to feel a bit toxic in his mouth, perhaps because he was imagining Persephone weighed down by rocks, unable to wander and drift from fancy to fancy. That was a...loaded train of thought, to say the least: rife with both longing and discomfort. To anchor her here, right here with him...yes, a complicated idea.

 

“Bind her with a golden band

Take it from an old man.”

 

Like a fool, he caught Persephone’s eyes over the boy’s shoulder at that moment. They were ablaze, in a glare that would level lesser men. As it was, though, she only made him...pause.

A pause was all it took for the murmuring to break out in the gathered onlookers.

 

“Low, keep your head, keep your head low  
Oh, you gotta keep your head low  
If you wanna keep your head

Oh, he said he’d shelter us  
He said he’d harbor me  
He said we'd build them up  
And then the walls would set us free  
I’m gonna count to three  
And then I’ll raise my head singing,  
One, two, is it true?  
Is it true, what he said?”

 

As they did their muttering, Persephone took long strides forward, but she did not approach Hades; rather, she walked past him at an angle and hooked her arm through that of...

Oh. The girl was here: Eurydice.

Persephone had picked her from the crowd like a flower in a garden. Of course she had.

In a gentle voice, but one that carried through the whole space, Persephone addressed the girl, whose expression was one of astonishment and unease.

 

“When I was a young girl, like you

Sister, I was hungry, too

Hungry for the Underworld

When I was a young girl.”

 

How she stressed that repeated line, as if to taunt him with how things had changed.

 

“Now, you know how it tastes

The fruit of Mister Hades’s ways

Sister it’s a bitter wine.”

 

She wasn’t...

 

“Spit it out while you still have time.”

 

Was she actually taunting him? In front of his subjects, as if she thought that would end well? And she prodded Eurydice’s side, playfully, maternally.

Physical touch was never so simple between them, anymore. There was weight to it, always.

 

“Take it from a woman of my age

Love is not a gilded cage

All the wealth within these walls”

 

And she spun around (Hades caught a flash of Eurydice’s awestruck look, as if the girl was truly aware that she was being handled by a goddess) and positioned Eurydice in front of her with hands on her shoulders, the same way that Hades had positioned Orpheus. In that position, she could look at him over Eurydice’s shoulder, which she did.

And she smirked vengefully.

 

“Will never buy the thing called love.

Love was when he came to me

Begging on his bended knees

To please have pity on his heart

And let him lay me in the dirt.”

 

He wanted her to stop.

She didn’t. With a nostalgic lilt to her voice, now, and her eyes trained on the rock formations above as if she was imagining a sky in its place, she plowed on:

 

“I felt his arms around me then

We didn’t need a wedding bed

Dark seeds scattered on the ground

Wild birds were flying around.”

 

She really was setting the scene, wasn’t she?

It made him...almost wish he were weak.

But he was not. He was strong.

 

“That’s when I became his wife.”

 

His queen’s words were heavy with something.

 

“But that was in another life.”

 

That something was ambivalence.

 

“That was in another world.”

 

She fluffed out the skirt of her dress as if physically sweeping away something trivial.

 

“When I was a young girl.”

 

She ran her hand down the side of Eurydice’s face, but it was clear that she was done speaking. The outbreak of murmuring was immediate.

She had out-performed him.

In retaliation, Hades grabbed onto Orpheus, who he now noticed had been edging closer to Eurydice all this time, and roughly dragged him into more-open space.

He spoke even more loudly than Persephone had.

 

“Young man, I was young once, too

I once sang the young man’s blues

Women come and women go

Get you high and get you low.”

 

Oh, that was an idea. Not yet, though; it was all in the timing.

 

“One day she’s hot, the next she’s cold

Women are so...seasonal.”

 

He met Persephone’s eyes when he said this. She gave him no reaction except an unimpressed arch of one eyebrow.

 

“Women leave again and again

Take it from an old man.

Now I sing a different song.”

 

He stomped the ground, and the whole cavern began to shake. Persephone began to look curious, albeit not in a good way. Everyone else appeared frightened.

 

“One I can depend upon

A simple tune, a steady beat:

The music of machinery!”

 

And now, now he did it; with just a thought, he made the ground beneath them start to rise like a platform of rock, entrapping Orpheus with him as they rose higher and higher.

He shoved the boy to make him sit at his feet.

 

“You hear that heavy metal sound?

The symphony of Hadestown

In this symphony of mine

Of power chords and power lines.”

 

It was all spread out before them, now; they could see all of the lights and wires. He stopped the platform rising once it became difficult to see Persephone’s face.

The boy was panicked, of course. Hades tore the instrument from his back and held it out as if to drop it from this height. The boy reacted with more panic. Predictable, these commoners. Their emotions were like the strings on this instrument: the same old designated reactions to each stimulus.

 

“Young man, you can strum your lyre

I have strung the world in wire

Young man, you can sing your ditty”

 

And this was to all of them, so he made it loud:

 

“I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY!!!!”

 

He let his words hang in the air for them, and they did not use his pause to murmur amongst themselves. Again, they went silent.

And then he was calm, because returning to calm was a power of the strong.

 

“I’ll tell you what, young man.”

 

He threw the guitar at him, and the boy held it and cradled it.

 

“Since my wife is such a ‘fan’, and

Since I’m gonna count to three and

Put you out of your misery”

 

He could hear Eurydice’s noise of protestation even from here.

One.

 

“Give me one more song

One more song before I send you”

 

Two.

 

“To the great beyond

Where nobody can hear you singing”

 

Three.

He dragged Orpheus back to his feet, then left him alone on that platform.

Hades went to sit in his throne, even higher up.

 

“Sing a song for me.

Make me laugh

Make me weep

Make the king feel young again”

 

There was a look on Orpheus’s face, like he was going to refuse for some self righteous reason.  
Preemptively, Hades brought his microphone to him and shouted into it:

 

“SING. For an old man.”


	2. Epic III

The boy strummed his instrument. Simple strums; sad strums. But not quite the strums of a defeated man or a desperate man; he was applying artistry even now that he had been told his fate.

 

"Heavy and hard is the heart of the king"

 

He said the line while looking down, almost mournfully, but once he had finished the line, he looked up to meet Hades' eyes. The boy had dark eyes, and they were...deeper than Hades had been expecting. Like every word he sang was being transcribed directly from his own soul.

This _would_ be entertaining after all.

 

"King of iron, king of steel  
The heart of the king loves everything  
Like the hammer loves the nail"

 

It was the way he played, that was why Hades' heartbeat misbehaved with those words. It was the way that he was playing; infusing everything with a sort of intensity for which Hades now had to admit he had been starved. And his eyes still bore into the king's eyes, and the king did not look away because kings did not look away, not even when it truly felt like the eyes opposite him were adding weights to the scale that was the king's heart.

And none of it felt like pretense, which was the greatest pretense of all. Masterful, indeed.

The boy put on a show...by not putting on a show.

 

"But the heart of a man is a simple one  
Small and soft, flesh and blood"

 

The boy's eyes finally broke contact, going instead to land on the crowd below.

 

"And all that it loves is a woman  
A woman is all that it loves"

 

Hades smirked amusedly. _Yes, poor lad, with his reckless, vulnerable heart. That is youth, isn't it?_ What a joy to be rid of it. What a...Yes, joy.

 

"And Hades is King"

 

The boy turned around and did a quick flourish with his arm, as though honoring him, as though saying to the masses 'Look at your king!'. Then his arm returned to the instrument, returned to strumming, leaving Hades with a sour impression of the emptiness of gestures.

 

"of the scythe and the sword  
He covers the world in the color of rust  
He scrapes the sky and scars the earth"

 

No, not exactly the words of a man aware that he should be begging for his life. And as he sang them, Orpheus spun in a slow circle, scraping one of his feet against the ground beneath him as if smearing rust over it. Then, of course, he met Hades' eyes again. This time, Hades was less affected by the weight. Less.

 

"And he comes down heavy and hard on us

But even"

 

Suddenly there was a glimmer of light in his eyes, instead of weight, and a near-smile on his open face. Despite himself, Hades, though still stoic on the outside, perked up at the pauper's change in mood.

 

"that hardest of hearts unhardened"

 

The way he sang it, the word was real. Hades felt like every muscle in his body was relaxing. Simultaneously, the near-smile on the boy's face became a real smile, wide and full of danger. Such danger.

 

"Suddenly, when he saw her there  
Persephone"

 

His eyes bore into the king's, his eyebrows upturned in the middle, and he shook his head so slightly as he said the name, and Hades couldn't help but to think that this was how her name deserved to be said.

 

"in her mother’s garden"

 

And he sent another flourishing, honoring gesture down to the queen, completely devoid of irony, but Hades barely noticed. His eyes were full of the color green, the color blue, and...and the brown of flesh.

 

"The sun on her shoulders, the wind in her hair"

 

He could see it.

 

"The smell of the flowers she held in her hand"

 

He could smell it.

 

"And the pollen that fell from her fingertips"

 

Yes.

 

"And suddenly Hades was only a man  
With a taste of nectar upon his lips"

 

He hadn't even noticed that his eyes had gone to search the throng for his queen until they were on her. Her lips were parted slightly, as if to gasp at the imagery, and her eyes sparkled with moisture. They met his eyes just after.

 

"Singing:  
La la la la la la la…"

 

She blinked the tears away, then cast her gaze elsewhere.

 

"LA LA LA LA LA LA LA"

 

The music swelled as the crowd joined in. The girl, Eurydice, was singing along with an expression as if this was her favorite song, and Hades could imagine the two of them, the boy and the girl, returning to their shabby home and tiredly singing it to each other as they eased into whatever passed for a bed...

Persephone noticed, too, the look of loving abandon on Eurydice's face, and she noticed it turning to wistfulness in her eyes. She took the girl's hand, cleared a space, and as the music became grander, the two of them danced. The queen and the pauper.

They performed a dance that seemed familiar to both. Hades wondered if it was a dance from the surface, a dance for springtime and summertime. The queen's skirt swirled around her. She was the sun, the wind, the flowers and the pollen. The nectar.

The singing continued.

The king rose, and a few voices fell off the chorus.

He descended the stairs to the level where the commoners gaped and the queen and the girl still danced. The voices continued to fall away. Flower petals as winter grew nearer.

He was sure that he would reach out a hand, invite her to dance with _him_.

But the singing had gone silent by the time he was level with her. She was looking at him, a guardedness in her eyes, laughter fading with the notes. 

Eurydice was the last to stop singing, the last to notice him. She was so intent on her love.

And her lover stood over all of them, now. Mercifully, he broke the silence, the profound quiet between the king and his queen, and started to play again. There was too much- _too much_ -compassion in his voice when he began his new verse.

 

"And what has become of the heart of that man,  
Now that the man is King?"

 

He put it so simply.

 

"What has become of the heart of that man,  
Now that he has everything?"

 

It made Hades...want to hear the answer.

 

"The more he has, the more he holds"

 

Yes?

 

"The greater the weight of the world on his shoulders"

 

Yes.

 

"See how he labors beneath that load"

 

Yes. Yes, he did...did understand. The boy, somehow, knew just how...

Hades' eyes prickled with weakness, but the music had its hold on him, and he needed the next words, needed to know the rest, and he couldn't give attention to whether his subjects could see the tears in his eyes.

 

"Afraid to look up, and afraid to let go  
And he keeps his head low, and he keeps his back bending"

 

The strumming became violent, and it felt like every slice of the strings brought back a recollection of a time when he had failed her, failures that he hadn't even known were failures.

 

"He grows so afraid that he'll lose what he owns"

 

So afraid. So, so afraid.

 

"But what he doesn't know is that what he's defending  
Is already gone"

 

He felt a panic. He looked around him, but she was still standing right there. Still guarded. He noticed, just then, that she was standing between him and Eurydice, as if to protect her. 

 

"Where is the treasure inside your chest?"

 

It did feel like something in him had gone missing. Like falling asleep with your arms around someone and waking up to coldness on the other side of the bed.

 

"Where is your pleasure? Where is your youth?"

 

The panic was an existential one, now; a slower, creeping panic that made him feel like the vacuum inside of him was pulling him in, devouring him. And then what? What came after?

 

"Where is the man with his hat in his hands?  
Who stands in the garden with nothing to lose, singing:  
La la la la la la la…"

 

Yes, he...he knew this part. He knew the next line, the next sequence of notes. This he knew.

And he sang.

The notes escaped him all warm, like birth, like the birth of something living and mortal and vulnerable.

The boy sang back to him, giving him back the warmth, and Hades realized that in his rapture, in his distraction, he had lowered the platform of rock that had separated them. The boy stood close, earnest dark eyes never wavering.

They sang the last notes together.


End file.
